2 Tickets to Wine Country: Sam’s Joins South Loop Rebirth, Carving Niche From Historic Bus Depot

By Seka Palikuca, Chicago Tribune

Dec. 16–While the South Loop may be known these days for the massive construction that’s filling its vacant lots and concealing the railroad tracks, the rehabbing of old warehouses and other buildings has helped the neighborhood retain its vintage flavor.

It’s that flavor that lured Sam’s Wine and Spirits’ President Brian Rosen and made him choose a historic building for his fourth store.

The new 16,000-square-foot Sam’s opened last month in the former Union Bus Depot building at Wabash Avenue and Roosevelt Road. Completed in 1928 at a reported cost of $1 million, it was the city’s first central terminal for bus travelers, according to Tim Samuelson, cultural historian for the City of Chicago.

“Sam’s has been eyeing that building for many years — at least five,” said Rosen. “We have watched the South Side change, beautify and clean up. As a historic retailer in Chicago, it only made sense that we moved into a historic building with the same pedigree.”

Sam’s began as a saloon on Division Street in 1946 and added packaged goods 10 years later, after it moved to North Avenue and Halsted Street. That’s where it established Sam’s Catacombs, considered the foremost wine cellar in the city. Its four locations are the Marcey Street flagship, and stores in Downers Grove, Highland Park and the new one in the South Loop.

The building it occupies there was designed by Chicagoan David Saul Klafter, who began as an office boy for famed architect Louis Sullivan. It boasts a cladding of ornamental terra cotta and nearly floor-to-ceiling windows on its street frontages.

The Sam’s store has retained other historic aspects of the building, including a hand-laid mosaic tile floor in the section that used to be a Thompson’s restaurant, a chain of popular cafeterias in Chicago that Samuelson called “the Starbuck’s of its day.” Also remaining are the original terrazzo floor and central staircase that would take travelers down to the bus boarding area. The stairs now lead to a rare wine room and a wine information desk staffed by sommeliers.

“There is this tradition of buildings being reinvented [in the South Loop]. Now, there is retail to support the residential,” Samuelson said. “Grocery stores, Target, Whole Foods and Sam’s Wine & Spirits certainly fall into that category.”

Sam’s also preserved the curved wall that provided clearance for buses to exit the terminal onto Roosevelt Road.

“It served as the main station for several bus lines — the most famous being Greyhound and Trailways — but also other long-forgotten lines like Safety and Yelloway,” Samuelson said.

The South Loop was one of Chicago’s first residential districts, settled by mostly working-class Irish immigrants. Railroads filled the area in the 1950s, and after the Great Chicago Fire, which spared the area, it became home to the city’s booming film industry.

By the late 1930s, the South Loop was a principal point of entry for southern African-Americans. Some of the great Chicago bluesmen traveling north from the Mississippi Delta got their first glimpse of Chicago from Roosevelt and Wabash.

“Probably a significant portion of today’s African-American community in Chicago can claim family who first arrived in Chicago at Wabash and Roosevelt via bus,” Samuelson said.

Adding to the South Loop’s retail/residential renaissance will be Centrum Properties’ mixed-use project, the Roosevelt Collection. Planned just north of Roosevelt and west of Clark Street, the project is slated to have about 1,000 condominiums, parking for 1,700 cars, 400,000 square feet of retail and a 2.5-acre park. Completion is projected for late 2009.

Across the street from the former depot is historic The Roosevelt Hotel.

Built in 1885, the Roosevelt was a prominent downtown hotel in its heyday. In 2002, developers Keith Giles of Frankel and Giles and Allison Davis of The Davis Group, converted it into 42 rental apartments, salvaging its original neon sign. Its ground floor is home to a Chinese restaurant and the Bongo Room, a popular breakfast spot.

“I think that corner is the best retail corner in the South Loop,” said Giles. “All day long there are pedestrians walking around” — students from Columbia College or ‘L’ riders or people heading toward the Museum Campus.

According to Gail Lissner of Appraisal Research Counselors, eight adaptive reuse residential buildings are being marketed in the South Loop. They include: Opera Lofts, at 2545 S. Dearborn St.; the 116-unit Prairie District Lofts, at 1727 S. Indiana Ave.; and Motor Row Lofts, at 2301 S. Michigan Ave.

Opera Lofts is transforming a former opera warehouse into 93 condos with 13- to 30-foot ceilings and exposed columns, brick and spiral ductwork. A model is set to open by early January.

Originally built between 1905 and 1927 as a warehouse, Prairie District Lofts offers ceilings of 12 to 20 feet. It was converted to rental apartments in 1996, and Kargil Development has been taking the units condo since the beginning of the year.

Motor Row Lofts is reshaping a former automobile showroom in a historic landmark into 52 condos. That status entitles buyers to a real estate tax-assessment freeze for eight years and a partial freeze for four more.

Restaurateur Jerry Kleiner made his footprint in the South Loop early. In 2000, when he opened Gioco, at 1312 S. Wabash, in two adjacent buildings dating to 1890, a Tribune item called the food good and the location “odd.” The restaurant’s decor hinted at the building’s past as a speakeasy.

Kleiner followed in 2002 with Opera in a former film vault at 1301 S. Wabash. Opera’s dining booths were carved out of those fireproof film vaults.

“Film was considered an explosive, dangerous material,” Samuelson said. “So, there were concrete bunkers. By ordinance, it had to be stored outside the downtown area because Chicago had a little incident back in 1871.”

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spalikuca@tribune.com

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